She referred to Randolph Van Hamelin, not her father’s sire but her mother’s. The old man, still alive at ninety-nine, held the strings of the only purse in Clara’s family that contained any money. Even this grand house—lately fallen to far less than grand—had come via Clara’s mother, as well as any monies to maintain it.
Randolph Van Hamelin had not approved of his daughter’s determination to marry the young doctor Anson Allen. Even though she was his fourth daughter of seven and well down on his list of potentially advantageous matches, he had his sights set higher than a struggling physician who had clawed his way up from the gutter, as Grandfather put it. But Clara’s mother, Penelope, had been a forceful young woman, not unlike Clara herself. And when she came up carrying Anson’s child, she got her way. The scandal had been legendary, at the time.
That child had not survived infancy, nor had the next two who came along. A punishment for disobedience, so Randolph declared. Clara alone had thrived, and that only because her mother had brought her back to life on the birthing couch, having discovered her own talent in her refusal to lose another child.
So Clara had in essence died and come back again.
I know how you’ll feel, she silently told the man now lying before her. Of course, an infant had little to forget, so it hadn’t mattered much. And of course, being but a toddler four years later, she hadn’t been able to return the favor when her mother died of a seizure in her father’s arms.
Father had always blamed himself. “What sort of doctor am I,” he asked more than once, “who couldn’t save the woman he loved?”
From that day sixteen years ago, Grandfather Van Hamelin had done his best to drive his son-in-law from the house and into ruin. Under the terms of the entailment, however, any child of Penelope’s was entitled to live here until the age of twenty-one. After that, in order to hold the property she must be wed.
And Clara would turn twenty-one in less than a week, which meant if she didn’t want those who were dependent on her tossed out on their ears, she must conform with the edict as soon as possible.
So why not just find a proper husband—one still breathing? Someone off the street, perhaps, a dockworker or a ruffian who would provide her the pleasure of shocking her grandfather’s sensibilities? The answer was that Clara had no wish to answer to such a man, or any man. This fellow would know—would be—only what she told him, her own creation.
“If you wish to stay and help me,” she told Georgina softly, “then stay. If you don’t, then leave now. I’m ready to begin.”
Georgina gave her a searching look. “I’ll stay. But what if it goes badly?”
“It won’t.”
“Are you sure he’s strapped down well enough?”
“Yes. Ruella did that job before she left. Flip on the steam generator for me, will you?”
The room needed to be warm—she had learned that during past experiments. It helped if the subject awakened in an environment that was moist and heated, akin to the womb. And the breath of life was more easily received by warmed flesh.
Georgina walked to the corner and switched on the generator, which came awake with a rumble as the boiler lit. Immediately the familiar clatter started, the gurgle as water began drawing through the system. Once it got going, the system thudded like a heartbeat. Appropriate somehow—that would be the first thing her subject heard when he awoke. If he awoke.
Still obviously uneasy, Georgina rejoined Clara at the table. “You know you’re going to have to touch him.”
“I’ve already touched him. Ruella and I stripped and washed him down.”
“You’re going to have to kiss him.”
“It isn’t a kiss. It’s a resurrection.”
“You’re mad, Miss Clara. Stark raving.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Wasn’t it why she could allow no one—other than these lost waifs and misfits who already surrounded her—into her life? How could she expect an ordinary, sane man to accept the woman she was? Either she created her own husband, or she took none at all.
The room had warmed quickly. Now clouds of steam billowed and surrounded the table, lending an unreality to this thing she undertook. It blurred the edges of her vision and her reason.
Did she do the right thing?
She did the only possible thing.
She rested her fingertips lightly against the corpse’s chest and closed her eyes. He no longer felt cold, but he did feel quite dead. She’d learned the difference over these many months. Against all the distractions she quieted her mind and reached for the power within.
It slept much the way the man’s flesh did, resting in oblivion. Like a separate entity within her, it mellowed and simmered until she called upon it, when it flared to life, bringing life.
She whispered a prayer now in her mind, none learned in any church but one that seemed to have passed down with the power itself—for protection, for rightness, for the one she sought to raise. She did not know him but she would, in the most intimate way possible.
She let the power grow and flare and burgeon inside her because she would need a great quantity of it, more than ever before. When it threatened to overspill her like hot water in a steaming kettle, she opened her eyes.
Everything looked different. The room had disappeared behind the billows of steam, and the light took on a golden hue. She could sense but not see Georgina beside her. Golden radiance seeped through the tips of her fingers, which still rested against the man’s chest.
She felt full; she felt ready. She drew a deep breath—deep, deep, deeper than ever before—leaned down, and placed her mouth upon that of the corpse.
His lips, like the rest of him, no longer felt cold. His mouth lay open slightly, but she sensed nothing in him—no breath, no life. Yet her lips seemed to fuse to his and warm them further; a curious thing.
In the past she had breathed life into the mouths of lambs, cats, dogs—even chickens. Never, never a fellow human. Instantly she knew this felt different, but the life force filled her now, rampant and overwhelming. She could do nothing but breathe it into him.
She exhaled, an impossibly long breath that flowed over his tongue, down his throat, and into his lungs. She continued breathing—not air now but life itself—her eyes pressed tight shut so she couldn’t see.
His lips twitched beneath hers, just the faintest movement, and her heart leaped painfully. By God—or by Satan—it was working!
At this point she usually stopped and let the subject regain itself. Yet this time the life just kept flowing out of her until she wondered if she might not lose herself, pour all of what she was into him through this portal where their mouths fused. She felt his lips move more strongly beneath hers and the resurrection, unexpectedly, turned into a kiss.
She had already flowed her power into him. Now she thrust her tongue into his mouth as well, searching for something in him, some response or essence that should not exist. Her saliva passed into his mouth, and he twitched violently on the table as he tasted her.
And still Clara could not end the kiss. Helpless now and held fast, she stroked his tongue with hers and he answered, responding with a vigor that shook her to her toes. His tongue parried hers, danced, and then thrust into her mouth in turn, where he tasted her, searched her, drank deeply once more.
At that moment, conviction blossomed in Clara’s mind: she was not sure who he was, even what he was, but he was hers.
Chapter Three
Darkness. Steam. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. A rush of sensation, and lips on his—soft, soft lips burning, giving. Who was she? He wanted to open his eyes but hadn’t the strength. Yet he could feel her, oh, lord, he could, her essence flowing from the contact point of their mouths through every part of him. Down his throat and through his lungs, wrapping round his heart, which took up the rhythm he heard in huge, shattering beats. Across his shoulders and down his arms to his fingertips. Down through his stomach and into his bowels, pooling hard in his cock.
>
He wanted her; he wanted her like he had never wanted anything.
He thrust his tongue into her mouth even as the warmth continued to travel down his legs, making them tremble, and into his toes.
He could not speak; he could barely think. He could only kiss her, taking and giving in equal measures, letting the fervor of his mouth do the talking for him. He could only claim her.
Mine, forever more.
She jerked, spasmed against him, and he felt her strength wane. He stroked her tongue with his, a reassurance. I will uphold you. I will defend you.
The pressure of her mouth on his ceased abruptly, but his heart kept beating. He felt stronger now, filled with vibrant life.
He opened his eyes.
Light. Confusion. Billows of cloud and the inability to move.
A face hung above him, that of a child. No, she was a woman with a curiously elfin face. Soft ruffles of light brown hair framed a wide brow that narrowed to a pixie’s chin, a sweet mouth—still wet from his mouth—and a pair of eyes so unusual he could barely fathom them. Yet he couldn’t look away. Green eyes. No, gray like the clouds that surrounded them, or, no—
He must be in heaven. A curious thing, that, for he’d never expected to get there, not given the way he’d ended. For he remembered being hanged—that awful moment when he’d been forced up on the wooden box with his hands bound, struggling, feeling like his bowels were going to let loose, fighting against the hands that held him while someone put the noose around his neck. The box was kicked away, and—
He thrust the rest of it from his mind. He refused to contemplate the memory of his limbs thrashing, the endlessness of the ordeal, the growing pain and darkness. Who would have thought it would culminate in heaven?
Yet she had to be an angel, didn’t she? He wanted desperately to kiss her again, and he knew he was hard down below, like a railroad spike.
He sought for his voice, which rumbled up through him from an inestimable distance and came out in an agonizing croak. “I can’t move.”
She jumped back from him like a scalded cat, but her gaze did not leave his.
“That’s because you are strapped down.”
Who would have thought angels spoke like proper ladies? Her voice wasn’t low class, but neither was it high. Educated. His sluggish mind supplied the word.
“Why? Why am I—” It hurt too much to complete the question.
“Sweet Jesus,” said another female voice from behind the clouds, “you did it!”
“Of course,” the angel replied, and he saw her lips move. Lips, tongue, warmth—kiss me again. His lashes fluttered as he willed her to it. He wanted to spend eternity so, with her mouth on his.
But she did not kiss him again. Instead she told him, “You are strapped down for your own safety. How do you feel?”
A good question. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Physically pained, yet not connected to the pain, if that made sense. But it didn’t. As evidenced by his cock, he felt aroused. Yet nothing seemed terribly familiar.
His brain ticked over slowly, struggling against the weight of the retreating darkness. “Untie me.”
“Not just yet.”
“Untie me!” Rage gathered inside him like rising steam.
“Calm yourself.” She touched his brow, and he did calm. Perhaps she was his personal angel, assigned to him here in heaven.
“What do you remember?” she asked.
He shook his head. He recalled nothing before being forced up on the wooden box, and the noose. It felt much like it did after a brawl or a bender—he usually couldn’t remember what had come before.
“It will come back to me,” he said. His voice sounded like the scrape of a saw on rough wood, and speaking felt very nearly unbearable.
Soothingly she said, “I am sure you have many questions, such as why you are here and why you are naked.”
“We go out of this world bare as we came into it.” The words appeared in his head, from whence he couldn’t tell.
“You are Irish.” She turned her head and spoke to someone beyond the reach of his vision. “Irish.”
Did it matter? Had he ended up by some error in the English heaven? And so would they toss him out? Made sense, that. Bloody English barely tolerated the Irish anywhere.
“If he was not born here,” the other, unseen woman replied, “you may run less risk of him being espied by family later on.”
“True.” His personal angel returned her attention to him. He felt her awareness curl through him like a balm and drew a long, shuddering breath.
“Untie me.”
This time she ignored the request.
He rasped, “Please.”
“A few more minutes.”
“Are souls tied up in heaven, then?”
“My good sir, you are not in heaven.”
“No?” Confusion gripped him, dark and terrible. He strained against his bonds.
She bent closer.
“Miss Clara, be careful,” said the other woman.
“But the angel—Clara—disregarded her. Gaze fixed on his, she demanded, “Do you remember your name?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me,” she said again, very slowly this time, “exactly what you do remember.”
Very hoarsely now he said, “Noose. I died.”
“Yes,” she told him implacably, “and I brought you back to life.”
’Twas just a terrible dream. Surely he’d got hold of some bad liquor somewhere. Half the fellows who ran these saloons made their own drink in a shed out back. A man might have some wicked dreams after drinking that. Because the lass with the pixie’s face—Clara—could not possibly have claimed what he thought.
“Shut the boiler down, please, Georgina.”
When she spoke, he could hear so much in her voice. She sounded calm, yet she wasn’t. False calm, as if she schooled herself fiercely. Yet she was but a wee slip of a thing. Not an angel, then.
The pounding in his ears that he’d taken for his heartbeat ceased abruptly. But his heart carried right on thudding in his chest.
Alive, sure.
He asked, making certain, “I’m not in heaven, then?”
“You are not.” Her face swam above him, all he ever wanted to see.
Very well, so he’d been on the makeshift gallows in the jail yard—murdered—and had ended up here stripped down by two women and tied up. One of those dreams, then.
Would she kiss him again? He focused his gaze on her lips, willing it. But nay, dreams never went the way a fellow wanted.
And what of the other woman? He’d not yet seen her, but if it truly was that sort of dream, she should lay hands on him down below, and he’d wind up having both of them.
“You must be wondering where you are,” Clara said. “You’re in the back room of my house on Virginia Street.”
“In Dublin?” he asked, his throat a mass of pain.
“Buffalo—America.” Something flickered in her eyes. “You won’t remember much. The process does not allow for retention of anything but immediate memory. A bit like birth itself, in that—we rarely remember where we have been before.”
Process? What the bloody hell was she talking about?
“Just try to remain at ease. You are safe here. And I will tell you all you need to know.”
He tried to clear his throat, but the pain remained. “Would you be at ease, then, if you woke up tied down and—?” He flicked his gaze down his own body and left the rest unsaid. Mixed company, after all, and she wasn’t a harlot. Was she?
“Probably not.” She touched his brow again, just the lightest brush of her fingers, but the sensation went through him so intensely he had to close his eyes for a moment. “Please, just be patient.”
He doubted patience had ever been his strong suit. He didn’t know for sure, though, because a great wall of blackness loomed just back of being forced up onto that makeshift gallows. He thought he’d been good with his fists and with winning argument
s. Clever with his tongue, as well.
At the thought, he relived the sensation of her mouth on his, her tongue encountering his. He wanted it again, so badly it made him breathless.
But his brain was beginning to hum faster now, his wits—if not his memory—returning to him. Cunningly, he said, “Thirsty. Throat hurts.”
“That will be from the force of the noose. I am afraid it will pain you for some time. You will need to heal—there is little I can do for you.”
“Water? Please.”
“Of course. Georgina, bring me the pitcher, if you will.”
He heard someone move about, and Clara turned away from him. When she turned back, she held a cup in her hands.
He wanted that water very much. But he wanted his liberty more.
“Here.” She tipped the cup to his lips, but he lay flat on his back, and it took little effort to let the water dribble down into his ears.
“Blast,” Clara said, clearly annoyed.
“Untie me so I can sit up to drink.”
“Not a good idea.” The other woman came into view, a little brown lass, very pretty. Nay, he would not mind her hands on him. But she scowled, cautious and troubled. “It’s dangerous.”
“Perhaps just the first two straps,” Clara said, “so he may take the water. We will leave his legs bound.”
Aye, and he would have no trouble overpowering them—a slip of a lass and Clara not much larger. Did they not think that once his arms were free he could throttle them and untie his own feet?
And escape. Where? Out into some city he did not even recall?
Georgina had large, dark, almond-shaped eyes set in a delicate face, and hair that frizzed all around her head. “You can’t tell what he’ll do.”
“I can hardly leave him strapped down forever. I shall need to explain things to him, reason with him.”
“Better to do that while he’s still under control.”
Clara bent a stern look on him. “If I help you to sit up and take some water, can I trust you?”
He allowed his lashes to sweep down to cover his eyes, hiding the deception within. “Oh, aye, you can trust me, sure.”
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